Describe the 80/20 rule in a product management context.

Remember to define how the 80/20 rule applies specifically to product management. Also, including an example of how you have applied the principle in the past will add value to your answer.

"The 80/20 rule states that eighty percent of the value of the work done by an individual--on a project or at a higher level--will be derived from focusing on twenty percent of the most impactful work. For example, Microsoft found that they could solve eighty percent of the crashes and errors in their software by resolving the top twenty percent of the reported issues with their systems. In a product management context, the rule is used to identify the twenty percent of features that will generate eighty percent of the value that can be derived from feature development.

I applied this principle directly in my work as a product owner at my last company. I held brainstorming sessions with my business owners and stakeholders to drive out a list of opportunities and issues with our product. We then did an impact assessment and used it to help us prioritize the list. We had much more work than we had left in our budget for the year, so I suggested we apply the 80/20 rule. We identified the top twenty percent of the items we had prioritized and identified those items as our features that would be the most impactful to work on. We left the other items in the list as possibilities to work on once the top twenty percent was complete and we quickly found that many of those items became non-issues once the most impactful items had been developed and released.

The top twenty percent created a significant reduction in operating costs and allowed for staff augmentation. We were also able to increase sales. Once we got into the forty to fifty percent range of the features, we noticed the impact dropped off sharply and we decided to move resources off of the development of this product and onto some higher priority work for another product."